Saturday, March 28, 2009

She's Here!!!





Yep, we have a filly. She is really cute. She was born early this morning. We got the call about 5 am.

I am too slow taking pics. The foal was being really cute with kid #3, but I clicked too late.

Friday, March 27, 2009

Springtime in Wyoming

No Foal Yet, Fortunately. It was -8 degrees Farenheit last night. Not celcius -- Farenheit. That is freaking cold. I thought for sure that since the roads were packed with snow and it was miserable out, that she would finally foal, but nope. No baby.

But this is a view from my steering wheel(after all of that snow. I had to dig out just to get to the truck.

Foxy was not posing well today. She wanted to play with the camera.


Once again, the camera was not in my hand right when I needed it.
I let Foxy play indoors while Kid #1 rode Belle. Then I turned the girls loose outside to get some sun. The first thing they did was to find a snow drift and make snow angels. They love the snow. Belle prancing all through the snow and laid down with her legs tucked up under her. It was really weird looking, but, of course, no camera at that point.

This might be the closest prediction that I would like Outlaw to look like.


But what I would really like is for him to look like his uncle --

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

New Theory

We came up with a new theory today. Foxy has only had fillies. She has always been right around her due date. She is late. She must be having a colt, so she is keeping him tucked in longer to give him a better start because males have a tougher time in the first weeks of life (bizarre but researched phenomenon).

It's an idea, at least, but not really a theory.

She's waiting until Friday, though. Jackson is a lot farther away than Green River. I'm screwed. Oh, well, such is life.

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

You guessed it, I'm still waiting.

Nothing yet, but I do have more pictures.

1

2

3

4

5

Okay, which of the five do you prefer?

Monday, March 23, 2009

Still No Foal!

I really should not be impatient. Foxy really is due today. I conveniently forgot that because I figured that she would foal while I was out of town. I just hope that she doesn't wait for this weekend while I am driving to a science conference in Jackson. That would seriously suck.

I finally just scanned the pics in at home, instead of the fast scanner at school. As the Esteemed Slave Driver would say, Better One, or two, or etc?


1


2


3


4


5

Now, don't judge on their coloring abilities or lack thereof. Think only of the whether or not the markings are realistic or just appealing to you. Once Outlaw is born, I will try and match up one of the pics, or at least the one that is closest.

Sunday, March 22, 2009

No Foal yet


NO Foal yet, but I did survive the State Chess Championships. . . barely. We took home three individual trophies and three team trophies, so we represented well. Kid #2 and #3 were two of the individual trophies and the team, so they are happy. I checked up on Foxy a million times. My sainted husband was fairly nice about it but when I called while he was stacking hay, he seemed a but fed up with the calls. I know that he would call, but I am paranoid.

Today, Foxy did not finish her hay. Her udder is distended like a milk goat that someone forgot to milk. She is so miserable that she did not even buck around with Belle today when Belle was having a bucking fit. It is supposed to snow -- depending on whom you care to believe -- 3-7 inches or 6-10 inches in the next 24 hours, so I expect theat baby at any time.

I am still trying to get the scanned pics to load of my students' predictions. They are the wrong type of file, so I might just take pics of them and upload them that way. If I even make it to school tomorrow.

Friday, March 20, 2009

Foxy's Birthday

Today is Foxy's Birthday. She is eleven years old. For her birthday, she received a vigorous grooming from her favorite people; namely kid #1, Kid #2, and Kid #3. She also received a juicy apple. Unfortunately, for her, she is still in foal. After much discussion, there is a consensus that Foxy will have the foal Sunday or Monday. We are supposed to have a huge change in the weather on Sunday with Snow on Monday. She looks about ready, but probably not today or tomorrow.

Tomorrow is the State Chess Tournament, so I am really hoping that it won't be tomorrow because I really want to work on the imprinting.

I am trying to upload some of the pictures that my students made of their predictions for the foal, but they don't seem to want to upload. I will try again tomorrow. Some are really nice markings.

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Still waiting

No Foal yet, but I was looking online and found a horse with similar bloodlines. Isn't she pretty :)




I took some pics that have turned out really bizarre, so I thought that I would share.







Monday, March 16, 2009

FIVE DAYS!!! WILL I SURVIVE?

We are down to five days. My children are counting down. The other people at the barn are counting down. My students are counting down-- actually, I think that the students just want to prove me wrong about the genetic prediction assignment that I forced on them. I don't know how guys do it. I am not the pregnant one, but I am a worse mess than when I was expecting my own children. Or I forgot how bad it was. I am just glad that this is Foxy, not Belle, like I had originally planned for.
Stress makes me sick, so I am surviving on Tylenol Cold and Flu, right now.
Even Belle is a bit stressed. Today, I was slower bringing Belle into the barn from the outside arena -- today was nice and sunny. I think that the wind was not more than 50 mph. The second that Belle was in the stall, she had to look through the opening between the slats separating the stalls and nickered at Foxy. If she could, Belle would hold her hoof during the whole process. Either that or Belle just wants another foal to swipe. She loved Foxy's last one.
I told her that if she hadn't tried to kill the stud, she could have been ready to foal, too. She just whacked me in the head.
I don't think that she was listening.

Saturday, March 14, 2009

Officially One Week left

My brilliant husband figured out how to get the pics off the high tech memory card. We have to plug the high tech memory card into the brand new printer (our old one did not survive the packing up and moving to Wyoming)and wow, we have pics.
This first one is of the scabs from Foxy's injury (kick to the belly) The injury occured 2/22/09. The pic is March 2nd, a week later.

This pic shows her bite marks on her rump, also a week old.


This pic shows the scab at two weeks old.



This one shows the scabs in relation to where Outlaw is still hiding out.



This next pic is of the girls today, getting some sunshine. Right before Belle's legs got scrubbed.




Belle after getting all of the soap off of her legs.

I need to get some more purple shampoo. I had only about a tablespoon left in the bottle, so they did not end up nearly as white as I would have liked. This pic is really blurry, but at least her legs are relatively white.


I worked Belle pretty hard on listening to my cues. She was all attitude today. When I asked for a turn, she would stretch out her neck and refuse to listen. We did a lot of tight circles to convince her that it is much easier to listen to me the first time. Foxy was in the arena at the same time, loose. She has been quiet enough lately that I thought she was going to behave---WRONG. She laid into Belle and about got my son thrown from Belle. She really needs some attitude adjusting. I worked her as much as I could to convince her that kicking Belle is a dumb idea. I took a whip into the arena -- without my son on the back-- and waited until Foxy decided to attack Belle again. Sure enough, she went after her again, and I nailed her on the butt. Unfortunately, I did not think about what Belle was going to think about a whip smacking horse flesh next to her. She jumped more than Foxy did. But Foxy got the idea and got to trot next to Belle for a while and did not attack again, so I think that the idea sunk in. She has done this in the past with kids on both horses. I finally wanted to stop the behavior BEFORE somebody got hurt.

Friday, March 13, 2009

1 week left!

Ok, I jumped the gun by a day, but I just discovered that it was not my computer acting up so that I could not download my pictures. The new storage disk for my camera is too high tech for my computer. Annoying. But I did find my old one, so I have a few relatively new pics. Here is Foxy's big belly.






After writing a huge "comment" on Confessions of a Slave Driver, I found a pic of me on my own retired carriage horse. The dust specks are bad, but I think that it was my 8 year old that took the pic, so it's not really that bad. I don't like pics of me as a general rule, because they make me look even heavier than I am. This was one of those days that I did not feel like pulling out the saddle or bridle. It was a fun day, except for when she decided to run a barrel without be paying attention.



Tomorrow should be warm enough to bathe her legs and all cleaned up. Foxy is happily bedded down on her straw, her feed has been increased to maintain her condition, and she is very impatient to be in the sun. I plan on letting her play in the sun tomorrow while I work with Belle.

Sunday, March 8, 2009

Two Weeks!!!

We are down to two weeks. Foxy is huge! I just wish that my computer would download the pictures!!! I bought an 8GB memory card to replace my missing 1 GB to be all prepared and now my computer is FUBAR and won't work right.

Foxy moves like she is miserable. She no longer runs and bucks when put out to play. Belle gallops off and Foxy follows at a more sedate pace. She is eating well and I have increased her feed so that she doesn't lose weight. Her pelvis is so relaxed that it is squishy. She has tons of milk and she is irritable, but super affectionate. She constantly wants to be scratched. She will stand perfectly for the kids to brush her.

As a teacher, I had to find a way to incorporate Foxy's foal into the curriculum. We are currently studying genetics and I oversimplified coat color genetics to assign a prediction assignment. It was fun and the students had to color in a picture representing Outlaw. Some students did a great job, others made their pics look like a one year old vomited on paper. I will evaluate the pics compared to Outlaw when he is born. If there is one that is dead on or really cool anyway, the student will get some sort of gift certificate. A good grade should be incentive enough, but what the heck, it was fun. The APHA has a whole section on their website geared towards education so I used that for much of the information. My sister also let me borrow a book about predicting coat colors.
My personal prediction is Black tobiano male with similar pattern as Tink (the dad-- SD, I will post the pic again, just for you)but with only a star and snip (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:HorseFaceMarkings2.png)on the face, and lots of the little "inkspots" and a bi colored mane and tail.

Kind of like this guy's face, but with a little less white.

Monday, March 2, 2009

Tink's baby





I came across some pics of one of Tink's (Foxy's baby daddy) foals last year. I finally found the missing camera, took a bunch of pics and now they won't download (again, this seems to happen, alot!!!)

So enjoy the new pics. They are super cute. Foxy was bagged up pretty good today. Her scabs are peeling, too. The scrapes are not infected. This is the second day in a row that she has stepped on one of the kids, though. They are not going to want to play with her tomorrow.

Sunday, March 1, 2009

Three Weeks and Counting:)

Foxy moved into her new stall yesterday. She snorted for the first 10 minutes that she was in it. Belle did not seem overly impressed with the move, but she did not trash her stall last night, so she must have settled down overnight. From the looks of the bedding, Foxy did not go into the half of the stall that borders Cherokey, just the side that borders Belle's stall. I completely disinfected the stall and checked the walls for any problems. I pulled a rusty nail out of the wall. Even if I was not expecting a foal, I would not have wanted Foxy in there with a rusty nail hanging out of the wall. Foxy is bagging up and is really looking heavy. The foal halter is here, but I am still waiting on the blanket. It was really warm today, but last year it snowed in June, so I am not holding my breath that the weather will hold. There is mud everywhere. Belle and Foxy are still feeling frisky, though. they were loping around today while I was cleaning stalls.